Bath sponges and cloths are pretty important, aren’t they?
Recently we started using a sea sponge(above).
I didn’t even know the word sponge was actually a name of the creature in the ocean!
The feeling is one that I have never experienced. It is soft like towel but it also has some grainy texture that scratches off unnecessary stuff on my skin. That feeling is just awesome! Haha.
I got so amazed so I wanted to write about it.
In my childhood, all my family, my mom, brothers and sister used normal cotton towels, which is a size of kitchen towel in the states.
In Japan, as a memento or free gift, we often get free towels with an event or company name on them, so we had plenty of towels in our house.
Only my dad used a polyester cloth. He said he liked the texture as it feels like it gets rid of everything.
Cotton towel didn’t create much bubbles but my dad’s always made a lot so I always wanted to use my dad’s cloth.
Cotton towels always came like this, haha:
But my mom didn’t see a necessity, so I kept using cotton towel until I moved to Tokyo to study at my university.
Tokyo is so different from Hiroshima. It is very tiny, but has 34% of Japan’s population in that area. Which means it is so dense and material wise, they have everything there.
I found these cool looking polyester bath poufs there and of course I started using it.
It was the first time I used it. I felt so adult to use such cool item, not cotton towel anymore. Haha
It created lots of bubbles and I got amazed by that. To be honest, I actually didn’t like texture but since I thought it’s cool and handy, I kept using these ones until very recent.
My husband and I were even using it(below, it's cute. haha) this spring.
However, because I started to use my own soaps here, I started to doubt it.
I started to feel somehow very artificial touch on skin with the pouf and came to want to get something natural. My realization is that once you start using natural stuff, you come to want to use more of them and less of unnatural stuff. To me using artificial stuff with natural creation is like offsetting my own effort to do something healthy.
So I started to look up natural bath sponge online and encountered this sea sponge thingy!
I’ve never seen it in Japan.
I researched online. It seemed like a great stuff, and 100% natural and sustainable. So I decided to get it for us.
Only one time was enough for me to see how different this pouf and sea sponge are. There are desperately different.
It actually reminded me of my childhood cotton towels. Hahaha Texture is similar. (Sea sponge is nicer though)
After all, I think, the best stuff are always gifts from the mother earth.
(The other day, since this thing was so fantastic, I tried to get some for my family. They were about 50 USD per item! Of course it is not very common among us. haha)
Traditionally, in my country, we used hechima loofahs, which is also a natural creation.
That is a cute cucumber-looking plant hung in the air which you see everywhere in the country side.
I remember both of my grandmas were using them whenever I stayed at their houses.
It looks very tough so I have never used it but we can get them so cheap in any supermarket or home center.
My grandma told me once you soak it in water, it gets so soft that you feel really good .
My mom has never used it so the tradition seems to be till my grandma’s generation.
In my grandma’s time, everyone had the hechima loofahs. Not for skincare but there was nothing else to clean their body with due to lack of stuff. There was no towel in ordinary houses during war. My grandma is a survivor of WW2.
Especially we are from Hiroshima so our hometown was torn apart in the past. We had nothing at all that time.
So hechima loofah was a wisdom of common people.
She taught me how to make it as well. It takes a couple of months at least to make it! Now it is popular as eco-sponge with many cleaning effects. If my grandma heard about that back then, she would be so surprised. Haha
It also works very well to clean like sea sponge.
They are not the most convenient or reasonable options. However, I believe it is a big investment for health of both ourselves’ and the earth.
My grandma and her neighbors still drink water that springs from the mountains. They have two taps at home, one is from public water service, and another is from the mountains.
You can imagine which one is more fresh, tastier and healthier.
They don’t pollute soil or water with chemical stuff through their life styles so that they still have this natural drinkable water.
My grandma is 86 and is still so energetic. We even went to Taiwan together last year. Haha
I used to pursue a very convenient life and didn’t really care about the consequence of my lifestyle.
I never cared separating trash, and used chlorine bleaches for all my cleaning as it was the easiest.
It sounds like I was really a terrible existence for nature, doesn’t it? haha
As a human, as a part of living creature on the earth, now I believe the most natural way of living is to live with nature.
I am glad about the change of my view to see how I want to live and because of that, I can choose my life.
Choosing a sea sponge is one of actions I can take to choose my life :)
It feels better! hehe
FYI:
Here is what we got :)
And hechima loofahs:
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